Bournemouth were one of a number of clubs to have a representative watch the Champions league match between FC Porto and Galatasaray on Wednesday evening, report A Bola.
Porto won the match 1-0 and there’s several expensive targets Bournemouth could potentially be linked to.
But it may be more interesting to look at the earlier game between the youth teams of Porto and Galatasaray. Given Bournemouth sent someone to the senior game, it would be odd if they didn’t also watch the UEFA Youth League, and that’s where everything begins to make a lot of sense.
In the summer window it was reported Bournemouth were interested in spending €11m on Diogo Queirós, a 19 year old Porto B central defender. He captained the youth team on Wednesday.
To this, we can add quotes from Bournemouth scout Des Taylor, who confirmed in April that his club were scouting Porto in the UEFA Youth League.
Speaking then about players from the final four fo the competition (Porto, Chelsea, Man City and Barcelona), Taylor said: “We know the vast majority of players through observations we’ve made before. But there are two who have stood out against Chelsea, like number 5 [Justiniano], who is very good, and 8 [Rui Pires], who is also excellent. Diogo Costa is another player that we appreciate, he made a mistake in the first goal, but he is a goalkeeper who has a tremendous capacity between the posts and who defends very well.”
“On the front, 9 [Irala], 20 [Madi Qeta] and 13 [Romário Baro] are very well on their football in the technical qualities they have. They mix this ability with speed, explosion, speed changes and dribbles, which proved to be complicated for Chelsea to stop.”
Diogo Costa and Romario Baro both played on Wednesday.
